Is San Diego enforcing pot shop ban?

Is the city of San Diego enforcing its current ban on medical marijuana dispensaries or turning a blind eye toward those businesses?

City Attorney Jan Goldsmith says Mayor Bob Filner has refused since January to allow city officials to investigate dispensaries that have opened in violation of the city’s zoning laws. Filner insists he is enforcing the law and he doesn’t know what Goldsmith is talking about.

It’s just the latest dispute between these two sparring elected officials, but the bottom line is that the City Attorney’s Office provides the hammer to shutter dispensaries and no new prosecutions have been filed for months.

The lack of prosecutions isn’t for lack of opportunity. During Monday’s City Council meeting, there was discussion that about 20 dispensaries are currently operating within city limits.

One of them — One on One Patient Association in downtown San Diego — was raided Tuesday by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency as part of a countywide operation. Ken Cole, who owns the shop, had spoken passionately during the council meeting a day earlier.

Goldsmith held a news conference Thursday to correct the record after Filner and his legal adviser, Lee Burdick, were quoted by local media as saying Cole’s dispensary was operating legally after discussions with the city attorney.

“No such discussion took place and we have never opined that any marijuana dispensary or collective is legal in the city of San Diego,” Goldsmith said.

He also noted that the City Council has twice directed the mayor to enforce existing zoning laws that ban dispensaries while an ordinance is crafted to allow those businesses. The first vote came in a Jan. 29 closed session after Filner ordered police and Neighborhood Code Compliance to halt investigations of dispensaries. The second vote came Monday when the council put its stamp on a proposed ordinance for dispensaries.

“Nevertheless, the mayor has refused to allow case referrals to our office since that time even though there have been illegal dispensaries open,” Goldsmith said. “We believe illegal dispensaries are once again beginning to proliferate and impact San Diego neighborhoods due to the word getting out that the mayor refuses to enforce the law.”

Since January, Goldsmith said he’s forwarded at least 23 complaints about open dispensaries to code compliance officials and nothing has happened.

Yes
20% (116)

No
80% (478)

594 total votes.

Filner said he is enforcing the law and Goldsmith has never asked him about the issue.

“I don’t know any of this to be true, or any of it to be factual or any of it to be right or any of it to be relevant because he hasn’t said anything to me,” Filner said. “I’m not letting anything happen. If he wants to give me information that something is illegal, let him tell me.”

Asked about his previous comment about the downtown dispensary owned by Cole, Filner said he had worked with the City Attorney’s Office about its earlier prosecution of the dispensary for several weeks.

“We had determined, I thought jointly, that it was a legal operation, that they had an express permit,” he said. “It was not the same as every other one because of the nature of the landlord and the nature of the building and all that. I mean there were different circumstances so we had assumed he was legal.”

Marijuana is illegal under federal law, but state voters approved its use for medicinal purposes in 1996. The city has wrestled with creating a zoning ordinance for marijuana dispensaries for years and the City Council directed a new ordinance be drafted Monday for future consideration.